Innholdsfortegnelse for July 04, 2018 i Autocar

KUDOS TO BMW UK’s special advisor, Ian Robertson, for breaking ranks with so many senior spokespeople in the car industry and saying what we all really thought: fully ‘braino €’ autonomous cars are unlikely to ever happen (p17). It’s refreshing to hear such an influential industry executive speak in such a frank way. As Robertson says, the denial of full autonomy won’t be due to technical limitations from the car makers’ side, but more because of legal and moral arguments. How can a machine ever decide who lives or who dies? That simply cannot be answered. So where does that leave the fully autonomous car? Not going around the M25 with a ‘driver’ reading a newspaper, that’s for sure. Instead, the braino € autonomous car won’t even be a car…

THE PEUGEOT 508 range will be boosted by a new high-output hybrid model next year, offering range-topping pace and pure-electric capability in cars equipped with the sportiest GT trim. The 508 PHEV will combine a mild-hybrid turbocharged 1.6-litre petrol engine set-up to drive the front wheels with a rear-mounted electric motor. The same system will be used first on the DS 7 Crossback E-Tense, which is also based on the PSA Group’s EMP2 platform, next year. Around 200bhp is expected to be offered by the 508 PHEV’s four-cylinder engine, assisted by a starter/generator motor. The motor driving the back wheels will provide about 100bhp and enable a pure-electric range of 31 miles (on the WLTP test cycle). It will use energy supplied by a lithium ion battery located beneath the…

BMW has launched a second-generation X4 just four years after the first model reached showrooms. The decision, which was forced in part by a need to link it with the model cycle strategy of the mechanically similar X3 to meet production line efficiencies, gives BMW the advantage of having the most contemporary offering in a lucrative market segment. The new X4 model tested here, the £55,315 M40d M Performance, is the initial flagship of the new lineup. Running the latest evolution of BMW’s twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre diesel engine, it serves up 326bhp at 4400rpm and 501lb ft between 1750 and 2750rpm. The longitudinally mounted inline six-cylinder is mated to a standard eight-speed Tiptronic automatic gearbox and, like all new X4 models, a fully variable four-wheel-drive system. Despite its 1895kg kerb weight,…

If success in the premium hatch class were judged on the quality of a car’s interior alone, the A-Class would have it licked. Aside from the ageing A3, perhaps, no other comparable car comes close for aesthetic appeal and material quality. For all of this compact Mercedes’ strengths, though, there are a few dynamic foibles. Although it’s an agile and balanced car through the bends, its ride can be choppy at low speeds. And although its 1.3-litre engine can summon plentiful performance, its unpolished and vocal demeanour restricts its appeal, as does its pairing with a transmission that feels volatile. All of which solidifies to deny the A-Class the class-leading compact premium hatchback status we’d imagined it might be worth with just the right engine. If you’ve grown keen on…

Honda has a big manufacturing facility in Marysville, Ohio. Inside, more than 800 Accords roll out of the door every single day. Next door, though, the Honda Performance Manufacturing Center turns out just eight NSXs. The process is laborious, albeit more automated than you might think. Chassis are robotically welded and — except for steel A-pillars and some composites — mostly aluminium. They’re dipped and painted on site, too, as are body panels. Then ancillaries, electrics and interiors are attached, without a great deal of automation, while engines (Honda has a separate engine assembly plant down the road) are slid in from underneath. Body panel attachment is one of the last steps — that’s a job that is performed by people, before the car is weighed, and ride height and…

The ID R’s siren For safety reasons, organisers require all cars producing less than 160db to run a siren. Volkswagen changed its original one because Dumas could hear it in the cockpit: “It was really annoying. The new one is much better.” “There are no guarantees here. The mountain will decide if she surrenders the record” Friday 22 June. It’s just gone 5.30am and the early sun is burning through the drifting clouds at Devil’s Playground, 12,780 feet up Pikes Peak. The still morning is interrupted by an incongruous high-pitched siren, announcing the arrival of the Volkswagen ID R Pikes Peak for its final practice runs on the top section of the 12.42mile course. Romain Dumas points the machine up the hill, waits for the course starter to wave a…

I completely agree with Matt Prior (Tester’s Notes, 20 June) and the obsession with SUVs. While not the most stylish or dynamic of cars, I drive a Volkswagen Passat Alltrack because I prefer estates and need good towing capabilities. It gives me the best of an estate car and four-wheel drive without driving an overblown SUV. I recently had the car MOT’d and my local spannerman wanted to buy it off me to tow his caravan with. Like me, he doesn’t like SUVs or see the need for them. The new Peugeot 508, Kia Proceed and even the Vauxhall Insignia estates are, in my view, much more elegant and practical than any SUV I can think of. There is, however, one flaw in my argument. Last year we bought a…

MILEAGE 3422 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To discover whether this sharply styled crossover is Toyota’s most appealing petrol-electric hybrid yet Now that the high-riding hybrid hatchback has been with us for more than a month, we’ve been able to subject it to some more of the ‘real world’ tests that your average family car would have to cope with. As you’ll note from the test data below, the average fuel economy has taken a slight knock now that I’m pelting up and down the M3 on my commute five days a week. On those journeys, I’m relying more heavily on the petrol engine. Obviously that’s the power source that the C-HR decides it needs to call upon for 70mph driving, but I’m at least partly to blame – being the…

Autocar readers are all jolly nice people, as I shall prove over the coming weeks. Bill, who runs the 1959miniregister.com, read about Wipergate and got in touch: “They are called swans neck wiper arms, same as used on Mk1 Minis. I have quite a stock of arms and I will send a pair.” He didn’t need to. Despite incorrect info from Halfords and a local factory that couldn’t get the right ones, a Lorry specialist had some. While there, I picked up some locking wheel nuts. The old ones got chucked when it was rebuilt, which was a pity. Update: Wipergate continues. More when I am less bored by it.…

QUESTION I need something practical, but I hate SUVs because of their high driving positions. Our bearded collie leaves hair everywhere, so a posh estate won’t do, either. We need to have space for three children too. Budget: £5k. Simon Jones, Washington ANSWER We think you should consider van-based MPVs like the Citroën Berlingo Multispace and Peugeot Partner because they are very spacious inside and have a dog-friendly low boot height. We found a 2011 1.6 diesel Partner Tepee with 72,000 miles for £4800. MA QUESTION I’m thinking of buying a classic car but I worry about the environmental impact. Can you suggest some options? Frank Tullen, Coventry ANSWER The likelihood is that you won’t be using this as an everyday car so the impact will be negligible. If you…

An expert’s view SIMON CLARKE, OWNER, MIDLAND HONDA SERVICES “As a garage owner, I’m sorry to say that very little goes wrong with the CR-Z. I’ve even heard of front brake pads and discs lasting up to 100,000 miles. Of course, you have to remember it uses a combination of traditional mechanicals and an advanced electrical system. For mechanics, that means being qualified to work on both. You really need to know what you’re doing before you go anywhere near the IMA battery. The VTEC petrol engine uses a chain rather than a belt, so that’s one less thing to worry about.” Buyer beware… ▪ ENGINE The CR-Z’s petrol engine is an i-VTEC 1.5 that likes an oil and filter change every 12,500 miles or 12 months. ▪ POWER BATTERY…

Volvo V60 Price new £31,985. Price now £17,922 It’s certainly not the greatest of estate cars, but the Volvo V60 is a bit of a bargain on the used market. This one-year-old example with 14,000 miles on the clock has depreciated down to £17,922, which is a huge saving over its new price. This one is also an extremely economical 1.6-litre diesel and it has an automatic gearbox for ease of use. We’ve managed to find one registered before the tax change in April 2017, too, so it costs £30 per year in road tax and not £140.…

The next-generation Range Rover, due next year, is intended to eclipse a new era of rivals in the fast-growing super-luxury SUV segment. With competition from the Bentley Bentayga and Rolls-Royce Cullinan as well as upcoming, more mainstream models such as the BMW X8 and Audi Q9, Land Rover’s task with the fifth-generation Range Rover is to create a vehicle that surpasses all of these rivals. It will attempt do so using not only its unique heritage but also technological advancements in powertrains, autonomous driving systems and infotainment. It will be revealed and on sale as soon as late next year as Land Rover celebrates 50 years since the launch of the original Range Rover. Land Rover recently confirmed that the upcoming Range Rover, alongside the next Range Rover Sport, will…

Volkswagen is evaluating a high-performance electric R model based on one of the forthcoming ID range – but will commit to producing it only once it can live up to the badge. VW recently broke the outright record at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with the ID R Pikes Peak (see p60), described as “an ambassador” for the range. So far, four ID models have been announced and the first, the ID hatch, is due in 2020. Jost Capito, the boss of the R division, told Autocar: “If we do an R electric car, then it will be a proper R, or else it wouldn’t make sense.” Asked when an ID R might arrive, Capito said: “We have an idea, based on what’s going on on the racing and…

“At its lightest dry weight, the 600LT has 475bhp per tonne. Expect it to exceed 204mph” McLaren has created its most performance-focused Sports Series model yet as a final hurrah for the current generation before it is replaced in 2020. The 600LT is lighter than the 570S but gets more power and better aerodynamics. It is the fourth McLaren to take the Longtail name, following the F1 GTR Longtail race car, 675LT Coupé and 675LT Spider. The 600LT will make its public debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. It is described by McLaren as the “fastest, most powerful and most track-focused – yet road-legal – Sports Series” model. It is powered by McLaren’s twin-turbocharged 3.8-litre V8 engine, which has an uprated cooling system and reduced back pressure in an…

The new BMW 3 Series line-up will feature 10 different models with five different powerplant options when sales get under way in the fourth quarter of this year after its debut at the Paris motor show in September. BMW’s rival to the Audi A4 and Mercedes-Benz C-Class has been re-engineered from the ground up for its seventh generation. Codenamed internally as G20, it uses BMW’s CLAR (cluster architecture) platform to enhance structural rigidity without adding significant amounts to the kerb weight. The next 3 Series also has a new electrical architecture. Sources say this will enable the saloon, the Touring version (due in 2019) and the related 4 Series model (due in 2020) to use the same infotainment and camera-based driver assistant technology as the 5 Series and 7 Series.…

Fully autonomous cars may never be allowed on many public roads, according to BMW’s special representative to the UK, Ian Robertson. Speaking at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) Summit last week, Robertson highlighted BMW’s leading role in developing self-driving systems, but conceded that it may never be morally acceptable to leave the decision for unavoidable accidents to a machine. “Imagine a scenario where the car has to decide between hitting one person or the other — to choose whether to cause this death or that death,” he said. “What’s it going to do? Access the diary of one and ascertain they are terminally ill and so should be hit? I don’t think that situation will ever be allowed.” BMW already has more than 40 vehicles testing on…

Leading European car makers have warned that a trade war between the United States and the European Union would stifle economic growth and cost consumers money. US president Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 20% on cars imported into the country, and the US Department of Commerce is conducting a review into whether such imports pose “a risk to national security”. EU officials say raising tariffs would leave them with “no choice” but to respond. The US currently imposes a tariff of 2.5% on car imports, compared with the EU’s 10%. China recently dropped its import tariff from 25% to 15%. The Auto Alliance, a US industry body formed by the major car firms, says a 20% tariff on EU imports would add an average of…

It’s still ‘the one’ to drive, say the people who’ve created the new Ford Focus, although obviously they don’t put it quite like that: they reckon it’s the most “confidence-inspiring, intuitive and rewarding driver and occupant experience of any mid-size family car in Europe”. Thing is, there isn’t just one midsized family car, but three or four, really: a normal five-door hatch, a posh version (the Vignale), a wagon and a tall Active version. And it doesn’t stop there, either, because there are two different rear suspension options – one independent, one not – because some markets don’t care so much about vehicle dynamics, and a torsion beam is a lot cheaper than what Ford has variously called a control blade or a short-long-arm suspension over the years. Then there’s…

The fourth generation of Renault’s all-conquering hot hatchback, the Mégane RS, has finally touched down in the UK in right-hand-drive form. It brings with it the 1.8-litre turbo four-pot petrol engine from the Alpine A110, with the wick turned up to 276bhp; a choice of seven-speed paddle-shift and sixspeed manual gearboxes; a segment-first active four-wheel steering system; and the familiar choice of standard Sport or bigger-rimmed, stiffer-sprung, slippy-diff-equipped Cup chassis options. Considering the car’s reputation for outstripping its rivals for vivid driver appeal, big expectations would have surrounded the launch anyway – even without such an enticing list of mechanical ingredients in the mix. The car made a very impressive start indeed at Renault’s Portuguese press launch earlier this year; but out there, journalists were restricted to testing Cup-specification cars…

MODEL TESTED A200 SPORT Price £27,500 • Power 161bhp • Torque 184lb ft • 0-60mph 8.7sec • 30-70mph in fourth 9.5sec • Fuel economy 38.8mpg • CO2 emissions 123g/km • 70-0mph 50.2m A little bit of luxury in a hatchback-sized package: that’s the promise the Mercedes-Benz A-Class has dangled, cherry-like, in front of Europe’s compact premium car buyers since its introduction more than two decades ago. It became a quite different sort of luxury package, in recent years, from how it was to begin with – the identity of the original 1997 ‘baby Benz’ having been built on greater space efficiency than anyone would risk with a car in the modern, ultraconservative, posh hatchback segment in 2018. These days, among fleet-conscious premium five-doors, conformity rules. Now entering its fourth full…

TO MY KNOWLEDGE, nobody has ever got their kicks on the A66. But here we are, a mile or two away from its (almost) coast-to-coast eastern end, near Middlesbrough. The not-exactly-archetypal all-British road trip, then. And in a British car, no less: a Honda Civic Type R. If the NSX is what the Americans think is the vision for a sports car, then the Civic Type R — developed throughout Europe but, crucially for this test, built in Swindon — is what we think one should be. So we’ll see whether two sporting cars, developed by the same car maker but predominantly from different markets, really suit those particular parts. They say clear your diary for a month to do Route 66 properly. I reckon you could do the A66…

The King’s Road in west London is overrun with fearsomely expensive boutiques and exclusive restaurants. It has long been the epicentre of London’s fashion elite, a sort of elongated headquarters for the city’s trendsetters. It is a haven for supercar spotters too. Lamborghini Huracáns are part of the furniture along here. But for all of that ostentatious wealth, there is a curious shortage of car showrooms on the King’s Road. In fact, there is just one, occupied for the past few years by the Chelsea Truck Company. “I don’t make any money from this place,” says company founder Afzal Kahn, abruptly and honestly, like always. “Not a penny. This showroom costs me £500,000 in rent and rates every year. Most of the businesses along here won’t make any money from…

The chassis used by the team is the same driven by Nick Tandy, Neel Jani and André Lotterer at Le Mans last year. It retired while leading the race by miles with only four hours to go. With one minute to go, there was silence around the timing screen. Cameras were primed but voices were hushed. Andreas Seidl, head of Porsche’s racing department, just stood watching with a nervous smile. And then we heard it, long before it came into sight. This was no multi-cylindered symphony of some automotive work of art, but the flat blast of a rather small four-cylinder engine working in unholy alliance with all manner of hybrid electric trickery. But, my goodness, it was fit for purpose. Through the last right Timo Bernhard came, the car…

ON SALE 11 JULY COMPARISON New Renault Sport Mégane vs Honda Civic Type R The ‘best hot hatch’ crown is currently held by the Civic Type R, but Renault Sport wants it back. Can the new Mégane restore order? INSIGHT How to start a car company Steve Cropley plots the remarkable rise of McLaren Automotive ROAD TEST All show and no go? We test the mettle of the stylish new A7 EVERY WEEK LONG-TERM TEST Skoda Kodiaq Time’s up on our fleet for the big Czech SUV. Will we miss it? USED BUYING GUIDE Jaguar XJR The 2003 XJR mixed retro styling with aluminium body. Here’s how to buy one FIRST DRIVE Hyundai Santa Fe Fourth-gen 4x4 has got more plush, but has it kept its rugged appeal? SUBSCRIBE autocar.co.uk/subscribe…

MILEAGE 7746 MILEAGE 7746 WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To discover if Vauxhall’s flagship offers an unbeatable mix of practicality, value and executive comfort in estate form I’m going to let you in on a secret. Let me explain. When you watch one of our Autocar video reviews on YouTube, you’ll hear a voiceover. In order to commit this to tape, we have to find as silent a space as possible, because the sensitive microphones pick up every squeak, raindrop and passing aircraft in glorious high definition. Luckily, car makers tend to spend a lot of time soundproofing their cabins to eliminate road and wind noise at motorway speeds. This makes the rear seat of a car about as good a place as you’ll find to record voiceover without building your…

CHARGEMASTER CEO DAVID Martell predicts that the clout of new owner BP will enable the company to grow tenfold within the next five years. The brand’s current rate of installation is around 100 chargers per month, but Martell expects the company to double in size in the next two or three years. It’ll continue to grow at the same rate as the EV car market, Martell said, and has already invested in a new 60,000sq ft factory in Milton Keynes. BP bought Chargemaster, which runs the UK’s largest EV charger network, Polar, for around £130 million last week after months of negotiations. However, BP’s investment in Chargemaster will continue as the company grows. Originally, Chargemaster planned a stock market flotation but BP offered the takeover as an alternative. The installation…

The performance that our A200 delivered on the twisting, dipping Tarmac of the Hill Route at Millbrook Proving Ground was testament to the calibration of modern stability control programs. That is not to say this is a chassis bereft of natural poise and agility – for a car that has precious few truly sporting pretensions, it scores impressively well on both counts – but the sensitive manner in which wheelspin and yaw were trimmed ensured that progress almost always felt serene by the standards of the class, even if it wasn’t particularly quick. That said, the torsion beam rear axle could become unruly when approaching the limits of lateral grip, although tight body control ensured that this limit was impressively high. Overall, this was a composed performance although not quite…

If you want to know what Route 66 is like but you don’t have time to drive 2500 miles, visit McLean. The town of McLean, Texas, was founded at the start of the last century because there was a railway cattle loading yard nearby. It grew quickly. Oil, cattle and livestock were all freighted through it and, in 1926, when America introduced its highway system, the most famous one of all, Route 66, passed through its centre. In the 1940s, 1500 people lived in this bustling small town. Progress, though, did for McLean what it has for so many other towns in America’s heartland. Industry centralised around fewer, bigger hubs, trains a mile-and-a-half long and 75mph trucks meant McLean was bypassed. Interstate 40 rounded it in the 1980s when McLean…

Patriotic to his core, Ricciardo’s ideal Le Mans line-up would see him sharing a car with fellow Aussie superstars Mark Webber (eight victories in F1) and Will Power (Indycar champion). Perhaps David Brabham could provide a set of wheels… A first-world problem of the highest order it may be, but the contractual conundrum facing Daniel Ricciardo is a proper head-scratcher. Mere hours before the 28-year-old Formula 1 ace sits down to chat with Autocar at a Circuit Paul Ricard cooking in its own Provençal juices, news breaks that a contract worth a staggering £15 million a season is in the offing, and it’s from McLaren. What money. What a team. But it’s not so simple. A move would mean departing an outfit that has masterminded Ricciardo’s seven grands prix victories.…

The 6x6’s third axle adds 880mm to the car’s overall length, which makes it somewhat tricky to manoeuvre around town. Don’t be fooled by its knobbly off-road tyres: you’ll rarely see a 6x6 away from the confines of a city, the exact environment where it is most compromised. Welcome to the world of boutique-modified off-road vehicles. The Chelsea Truck Company’s six-wheeled Defender starts from £149,995 (not all of its products sit at the affordable end of the spectrum, it seems) and the conversion process takes up to eight months. That rearmost axle should be engaged in only very slippery conditions and at speeds below 40mph, which means that during our test drive across a sunny west London, the car was powering a mere four wheels. Just about every surface in…

FINAL REPORT MILEAGE 9919 WHY WE RAN IT To see if the most hardcore TT is preferable to the cooking versions and a genuine alternative to a BMW M2 The TT RS turned up in November last year with three indisputable strengths: a) it was nice to sit in, b) it was nice to listen to, and c) it was unrepentantly rapid. It departs with all three intact, and adds a few more for good measure. In retrospect, it is the car’s unanticipated usability that has helped set it apart. That word is bandied about far too much these days given that it applies to virtually every car in a modern context short of those not wearing doors or a fixed roof, but it must be mentioned when talking about…

As a high-rised four-wheel-drive hatchback, it always did a decent job. The Terios should cost no more to run than the Charade (a small hatchback) on which it is based. The fuel consumption overall suffers by 5mpg or so but very few off-roaders are as cheap to run. The Terios was the most realistic 4x4 on the market and all the off-roader 99% of school-runners ever needed. No low ratios, transfer boxes or other gadgets to help the determined off-roader on their way. Still, a full-dealer-history 2005 car with 86k miles is £1195.…

135bhp The combined power output of a facelifted CR-Z from 2013 The most frustrating thing about it is the way raindrops remain on the side windows after you’ve wound them down and back up.” There, in a nutshell, is all one owner can find to criticise his CR-Z. Strange, then, that so many of the pre-facelift cars available from 2010 to December 2012, and under discussion here, appear to have had numerous previous keepers. One independent Honda mechanic thinks he knows why: “People get bored because the car just works!” More likely they’re a teensy bit worried about the life expectancy of the little coupé’s nickel-metal hydride battery, whose five-year warranty has just expired. (See ‘Also worth knowing’, opposite.) It can’t be anything to do with the way the car…

Honda Insight £10,995 Can an old hybrid car ever be desirable? If the Mk1 Toyota Prius is anything to go by, possibly not. There is, however, one old hybrid that somehow manages to be interesting, quirky and so well engineered that it can provide fuel economy figures that wouldn’t look out of place today, despite having gone out of production more than 15 years ago. That car is the Honda Insight. Like many high-tech wonders of the early 21st century, such as the first PlayStation or original iPod, Mk1 Insights are being snapped up by retro-tech fans and prices are starting to rise. The example we found on PistonHeads is up for £10,995, but it’s an exceptionally low-mileage car (less than 40,000). It’s also one of only 239 officially imported…

Nothing smacks of the 1970s more than a boxy, yellow Mercedes. This 1976 one went for just £3604 at auction recently, which isn’t a lot for a W123-generation car. At a little over 100,000 miles, it’ll never reach the upper echelons in terms of value. But thanks to a strong six-cylinder engine and an automatic gearbox, it’ll shrug off the demands of everyday use with ease. It will require looking after to maintain its legendary reputation for longevity, but you’ll be rewarded by a comfy, cool-looking classic that’ll still turn heads. Especially with its bright yellow paint.…